1. Technical Field
The invention relates to a spiral wrapping for an ironer roller of an ironer bed, namely a spiral wrapping for an ironer roller of a chest ironer, said spiral wrapping comprising a fiber layer which is arranged at least in one layer around the ironer roller or around a spring system which is supported by the ironer roller. In addition, the invention relates to a chest ironer having a spiral wrapping for smoothing out items of laundry, namely, a chest ironer for smoothing out items of laundry, said chest ironer comprising at least one ironer roller which has a cylindrical surface area and one ironer bed associated with each ironer roller, wherein the surface area of the respective ironer roller is provided with an outer spiral wrapping and a spring system which has springs is provided, where applicable, between the surface area of the respective ironer roller and the spiral wrapping.
2. Prior Art
Chest ironers, in particular for commercial laundries, have at least one rotatably drivable ironer roller which is provided with a spiral wrapping on the outer circumference. In many cases a bottom spiral wrapping is provided underneath the spiral wrapping, that is to say between the spiral wrapping and the outer surface of the ironer roller. Said bottom spiral wrapping consists of at least one belt band which is placed around the ironer roller and has a plurality of springs. The bottom spiral wrapping is consequently also referred to as a “spring system”. In the case of chest ironers with a spring system, said surrounding outer spiral wrapping is also referred to as a top spiral wrapping. When the term “spiral wrapping” is used below, this includes the top spiral wrapping of an ironer roller that has a spring system.
The spiral wrapping or also the top spiral wrapping is formed from a fiber material, as a rule a felt, in particular a needled felt, or a nonwoven fabric. These fiber materials are formed from thermally stable plastics material fibers, for example aramid fibers. They form a fiber layer which comes into contact with the laundry to be smoothed out. During the ironing process, the items of laundry, entrained by the rotatably drivable ironer roller, are moved slidingly along a stationary smoothing surface of an ironer bed which surrounds the lower half of the ironer roller. To this end, the items of laundry have to be entrained in a frictionally engaged manner by the rotating ironer roller. To ensure this, the outer side of the spiral wrapping coming into contact with the laundry has to have a correspondingly high frictional value or coefficient of friction. It has been shown that the frictional value of the fiber layer diminishes over time by the outer side of the fiber layer that comes into contact with the items of laundry becoming smoother over time. The result of this is that reliable entrainment of the items of laundry by the rotatably drivable ironer roller is no longer ensured, above all the contact force between the ironer roller and the ironer bed associated therewith has to be reduced, as a result of which the ironing performance declines.